


A Walk Through the Market

by bluecatboi



Series: Ceicel Tia's Drabble and Adventures [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Shopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28532646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecatboi/pseuds/bluecatboi
Summary: Ceicel runs into a friend while in the market and they just hang out.
Relationships: Orginal male character & orginal female character
Series: Ceicel Tia's Drabble and Adventures [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055456
Kudos: 1





	A Walk Through the Market

**Author's Note:**

> I crave soft fluff fun times and I make it. 
> 
> Maeve Bishop belongs to my wonderful friend Deja. Here is her character twitter: https://twitter.com/oftheholybooty

Ceicel was talking to Mjtha about nothing in particular honestly, though she did hand over a bag filled with gil, when Mjtha hums and looks over his head, “Isn’t that Miss Bishop? A friend from your company?” 

Ceicel glances behind him, watching Maeve pick her way through a conversation with the needy, too polite, and cheaply resourced miqo’te jewelry seller. “Ah… I think I need to go over there to save her.”

“Miss Bishop?”

Ceicel shrugs. He knows Maeve comes from a merchant noble family, but he doesn’t know the nitty gritty of her upbringing. Ceicel waves her off, slowly picking his way closer.

“-it was delivered from the finest shop from Kugane offers Madam, it is freshly minted in a jade salt bath.”

Maeve nods along, her eyes looking over the gem encrusted necklace. “And what of the silver of the chain?”

Ceicel comes up and overlooks the jewelry. Ah, he is right, that is fake silver, most likely a polished paint of cheaply mined copper, though to the untrained eye it looks decent enough he supposes.

“A fine eye Madam!” The miqo’te sings, “mine in Doma and touched by her elder craftsmen, though traveling such a long way has dulled their usual luster. However before you think ill of me, I would polish them after we have agreed on a price. No extra charges.”

“How nice,” Maeve says, and probably genuinely means it. Ceicel ignores the necklace in question and is not surprised by the spread of jewelry. Nothing outstanding, the usual lower targets of middling wealth to make themselves feel nicer. A gross methodology but one that too many employ. Ceicel sighs softly, which unfortunately draws attention to himself.

The miqo’te woman merely smiles and takes a deep breath to begin her pitch. She must not remember him… “Please save your breath, I merely came to examine the glass baubles you have today is all.” 

Maeve looks slightly surprised by his almost cold tone. He hides his wince behind watching the merchant lose color in her face and it finally dawns on her who she is talking to, “Ah…. Ceicel, you have…. grown since last I saw you.”

He smiles, “At least you now better hide your sources for your copper chains and even got a higher level of glass from what I remember.” He turns to Maeve, “While it is most likely true that the chain came from Doma, it most definitely did not touch an elder’s hand, you can tell by the brush work of the paint if you look closely enough.”

Maeve looks back down to the chain, “What is it truly made out of then?”

The merchant hesitates, so Ceicel answers, “copper, gray high pigment paint, blown glass, copper rings, and bits of leather most likely.”

Maeve looks the the merchant, who has turned a odd shade of red while staring at Ceicel, “I will not need the polish, and I’m sure 50 gil will be a comparable price?”

Ceicel hums, “A bit generous if you ask me.” 

“Thank you Madam, yes it is just right. Thank you.” She takes the gil just as fast as Maeve offers it to her. The necklace is put in a simple box. “Please come back anytime you wish.”

Ceicel knows that this invitation wasn’t extended to him. Maeve merely smiles and nods.

“Planning on desynthesizing it?” Ceicel questions now that they are far enough away.

“No, giving it to A’leksei so he can desynesize it. She clearly knew you, what did you do to her?”

Ceicel laughs, “Ah, I would often come into shop with my mother, and since she is a very good merchant she taught me how to pick out the good from the bad from the salvageable. That lady has been selling here since before I was born and has always been a bit too shifty trying to talk up low quality goods.”

“Was your mother as harsh as you were in your examination?”

Ceicel laughs, “I had to learn from somewhere. And I’m a bit surprised,” he follows Maeve as she splits her attention between him and any shops that catch her eye, “You come from Ul’dah, I thought you would have picked up some of the lingo used to up-sell something.”

Maeve shakes her head, “Just because my adolescence was spent there doesn't mean I know all there is about living there. I rarely had the opportunity to wander the streets.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Ceicel snorts, “So what did you do? Learn to play twelve different instruments and recite ancient poems?” He says mostly teasing, but also genuinely curious. It’s rare for Ceicel to spend time with just Maeve.

“You are not entirely wrong. I was formally taught the lyre, flute, and singing. Many of my hours were spent reading, and if I put effort into recalling some of my favorite epics, I could recite them.”

Ceicel nods, “Formal lessons huh? So no sitting at the dinner table asking you to explain if Momma takes three of your veggies and gives them to Mother how many veggies I have left?”

Maeve laughs softly, hiding some of her smile behind her hand, “No, unfortunately not. Did you still have to eat your vegetables?”

“If I got the answer wrong I would have to keep all my greens. But if I got them right I got a bigger slice of dessert, which is not fair now that I think about it. I still had to eat all my veggies no matter what huh?”

“Mothers seem to be clever like that.”

“But for more complex things like reading, that took awhile. Believe it or not,” Ceicel trots to be slightly ahead of Maeve, “I was a menace to keep track of, it only got worse when we moved to the East Shroud and I would play with the sylphs. But asking me to do anything that I didn’t want to do was a chore and a half, I have mellowed out.”

“Only slightly,” Maeve teases, “I watched you climb the top of Kugane’s tower only to throw yourself off while we were shopping.”

“That is totally different. Waiting and being asked to read are two different things,” Ceicel explains like that is the most obvious thing on the face of the planet.

Maeve stops and shakes her head as she laughs. Ceicel gently drags her to the size so they aren’t in the middle of market traffic.

“You want to know what it took me to get to really learn to read on my own?”

Maeve raises a brow, “A treat for every paragraph read?”

“No, I would have just figured out a way to eat them all at once. It took my Mother giving shiny things and gifts to the sylph to bribe them, to bribe me, that I should learn how to read. But of course that only worked for really really old text.”

Maeve, finally done with her first bout of laughter, falls right back into another, “How are you not talking like Urianger?”

“Because I wasn’t alway in books. I much rather hear the stories. You on the other hand sound like you were taught to speak by an old man.”

“That isn’t far off from the truth,” Maeve sighs, “I had to learn both in singing and in speech how the mouth works, and the proper way to breath to bring forth the correct sounds. Had to read theory on how it works. And when I was learning to read, I had to read correctly before I was allowed to go to my next lesson.”

Ceicel sneers, “That sounds like the less conducive thing to learning.”

“And I will argue that being taught by the playful sylphs wasn’t all that helpful to your ability to learn.”

Ceicel hums, “Maybe, but everything was a game, a game I could mess up on and try again. If I got tired we would stop, if I got aggravated we would learn something else. Nonstop learning until you’re correct sounds painfully dull.”

“It was. Hard to see myself learning in any other way by comparison unfortunately.”

Ceicel nods, “I will vouch that reading old text like a song made it much easier to get through large words.”

Maeve nods, “And I will do the same for at least hard pieces of music. Working on it until it clicks and that rush of success that follows is best done in one sitting.”

“I guess if we somehow combine both our upbringings you might have a well rounded learned person.”

Maeve nods, chuckling softly, “Just maybe slightly less feral,” Ceicel softly gasps at being called feral, “then you and a little more sure of how market place work than I.”

Ceicel laughs, “Or… maybe we can just go shopping together? I can’t go completely feral,” he says like the grossest word on the planet. Though he truly does mean it in all good fun, “there is someone to watch me, and you can’t get bamboozled by the market if I’m there to help.”

“I think that sounds like a lovely idea,” Maeve smiles warmly.


End file.
